[lojban] Re: Original orthography draft now online for critique

["Marjorie Scherf" <mls1@rice.edu>]

I don't actually speak Farsi, but one of my friends from high school does,
and she was showing me one time how to write the letters. (The standard, at
least in Iran, is to use Arabic script.) I don't actually remember the
letters, but I do remember that there are dots that differentiate some of
the letters (which in informal handwriting, two dots above can be replaced
with a line, and three dots above can be replaced with a circle) and that
they are put in after the word is written. So those two "issues" are no
worse than a common orthography for a common language. (And if the Arabic
language uses the same features in it's orthography, which I would expect
unless hearing otherwise, one of the word-ancestors of lojban.) Also, Farsi
doesn't even use any letters for half their vowels, so this is actually
clearer.

On the other hand, it might be that most people here are more interested in
"best possible" rather than "better than some existing thing". To those
people, my previous paragraph would seem completely irrelevant.

Now about the orthography itself, I think it looks beautiful. I see a common
theme that all the letters in the chart have beginning and endings at the
same height (except for the glottal stop symbols), making it appear that the
alignment of the whole thing is based on the line (which again reminds me of
the Arabic script) rather than based on writing things between lines (as is
often done with Latin letters). I can't quite tell from the chart whether
the top circle/loop in the p/b shape is supposed to be written as a loop in
the same stroke or a circle to be added after the word is completed. One of
those handwriting charts with the arrows that tells how to draw the letters
might be helpful. (In second and third grade when I was learning cursive
script, the teachers had those charts across the top of the chalkboard and
smaller ones across the top of each student's desk. I don't know how common
that is, if anyone else is going to have any idea what I'm talking about.) 

This point is more about the description, rather than the orthography
itself: Reading your description in the "Notes" section, I'm not sure what
you're referring to with the "stroke diacritic". When I look at letters that
differ only by stop/fricative, I see no single diacritic that differs any of
them. p/f look upside-down. k/x are completely different. t/s are completely
different. The only mark I see on the chart at all that I could see being
called a diacritic, other than the flick, is the slash-looking thing that
differentiates s/c and z/j and '/x. But all of these sounds are fricatives.
The difference between the pairs of sibilants appears to be differentiating
between alveolar and post-alveolar, and the '/x would be between glottal and
velar. But again, I see this as a modification to be made to the
description, not the orthography. If we wanted to have every mark and stroke
mean the same phonetic detail in every situation, a different orthographic
style entirely would be needed. Which might be a fun exercise for someone
who has the time, but that isn't something that has to be done to *this*
orthography.

Also, it might be easier for readers if on the non-cursive chart, you still
include the latin letters they represent, so that they don't have to go back
and forth as much between the two pages.

If someone who knows how to design a font would make one for this
orthography, I would probably use it. This would probably be easier to do
with the not-cursive version, but that's just my intuition. I don't actually
know anything about font design.

mu'omi'e skaryzgik.

-----Original Message-----
From: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org [mailto:lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org]
On Behalf Of John E Clifford
Sent: Sunday, 06 April, 2008 9:40
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban] Re: Original orthography draft now online for critique

I'd say somewhere a bit above the middle of the range of proposals (a B of
some sort -- roughly on a par with the Latin alphabet).  Having to go back
to dot the 'i's is a defect as is the fact that the use of diacritics for
phoneme distinction increases the likelihood of misspellings and/or
misreadings.  That aside. the various symbols are fairly distinct, though
perhaps unduly complex.  It is unclear whether in a running hand the
difference between a loop and a point will be maintained -- the misreading
problem again.  But it does look nice -- in a Thai-Armenian sort of way.

----- Original Message ----
From: LakMeer Kravid <lakmeerkravid@gmail.com>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Sent: Saturday, April 5, 2008 7:01:04 PM
Subject: [lojban] Original orthography draft now online for critique

My first draft has been uploaded to
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Original%20lojban%20orthograp
hy
Please comment and make suggestions, I'm open to drastic reformations.
I'm also looking for a name for it.
mu'o


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